Uihlein Hall was peppered with sparkly shoes and fluffy frocks for Saturday afternoon's opening of the Milwaukee Ballet's production of "The Nutcracker" - and that was just the little girls in the audience.

The production of "Nutcracker," directed and choreographed by Milwaukee Ballet artistic director Michael Pink, is a lavish, stage-filling spectacle that tells a classic story through a deft balance of child-pleasing action and elegant dance. | Dec. 8, 2012»Read Full Article(2)

When Scottish novelist Iain Banks announced in April that he had an inoperable form of cancer, his large online following responded with affection and dismay.

"There can have been few novelists of recent years who were more aware of what their readers thought of their books; there is a frequent sense in his novels of an author teasing, testing and replying to a readership with which he was pretty familiar," wrote The Guardian's John Mullan in his obituary piece on Banks, who died Sunday at age 59. | June 9, 2013»Read Full Blog Post